


This Is How It Feels When Your Word Means Nothing At All

by junkster



Category: Duran Duran
Genre: Drunken Confessions, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 06:52:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/582520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junkster/pseuds/junkster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John gets drunk, Roger makes a promise. Just a little friendship-y bit (just one kiss!), based after Andy's second departure. (I know John doesn't drink - suspend your disbelief!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is How It Feels When Your Word Means Nothing At All

**Author's Note:**

> (This is a work of pure fiction - no events depicted within are true to life (as far as the author is aware), and this is written simply out of love.)
> 
>  
> 
> **I imagine these sort of situations happening in so many different ways, with so many different reactions - this is just one of them. Title borrowed from Inspiral Carpets - This Is How It Feels.**

John is a difficult man to keep steady when he’s drunk, a chronic weaver and terribly easily distracted by bright lights and the music that pours out of club fronts. With an arm around his waist, Roger tries to keep him moving along the pavement, not to let him get pulled in by a heavy beat and a grinding bass, the things that call to him.

John links their arms together, his free hand waving at a convertible full of girls as they drive by, one of them wolf whistling at him and the rest dissolving into laughter that fades into the melee of the traffic noise.

“Whoa, not that way,” Roger warns, redirecting them as John tries to swerve off onto the road and gets honked at by a yellow taxi cab. “Careful, Johnny.”

“Whoops,” John laughs. “Wouldn’t want to lose two members in one week, would we?”

His fingers suddenly clutch Roger’s arm painfully tightly.

Fuck.

That’s why they’ve been out getting hammered. Or more precisely, John’s been getting hammered, Roger’s just been trying his best not to, well aware of the fact that he’s got some unwelcome press stuff to do in the morning. And he’d almost forgotten, in the thrill of the night, why John was getting quite so drunk.

He nods to the night porter at the front desk of the hotel as they stumble in, getting a polite smile in return and barely a second look at the dishevelled creature that is John. The lobby’s deserted, which, considering it’s well past one o’clock in the morning on a Tuesday night, isn’t too surprising. The lifts are broken though, still, so Roger leads the way towards the stairs with a sinking heart, knowing that getting John up to the sixth floor won’t be an easy task.

He glances sideways at his charge as they start making their way up - John’s gone strangely quiet and for a miserable moment Roger wonders if he’s about to re-decorate the carpet, but one quick check of John’s face reassures him that’s not the case. ‘Reassures’ isn’t the best word, though, because John looks genuinely unhappy suddenly, dark eyes downcast and skin pale.

“Not far to go,” Roger encourages him, not liking the silence between them. “Just keep moving those feet. You know I can’t carry you.”

By the third floor John’s coordination is really starting to waver, like some kind of newborn giraffe, and Roger’s shoulders are aching from supporting his weight.

“Come on, don’t give up on me now,” he says patiently, almost stumbling over the top step that leads onto the next landing. “Not much further and you can -”

**Bam.**

John trips over his own feet and goes down fast, the arm around Roger’s shoulders dragging him down too, John’s back hitting the floor hard and Roger landing with a thud on top of him, his arms too entangled with John’s to halt the fall.

“Fuck!” he curses, dazed and startled enough by the sudden change of perspective to be useless for a good few seconds. He presses his hands down against the carpet to get up off John, who must have had the wind knocked out of him, but suddenly John’s struggling to sit and pushing him up in the process.

“Careful, take it easy. Are you alright?” he tries to ask, but as they make it upright, practically sitting in each other’s laps, John reaches out to grab the front of his shirt with both hands and there are - god, there are _tears_ in his eyes. There are tears in his eyes and he looks tormented, hopeless, scared, angry. Drunk, very drunk, but devastated all the same.

Stunned into just staring at him, frozen, Roger can’t miss the whispered, harsh little words that tumble out of his mouth.

“Don’t go, _say_ you won’t go...”

_Crack._

Something gives way in Roger’s chest, his heart splitting right down the middle, the pieces dropping into his chest cavity as John’s fingers twist in the front of his shirt, holding him in place tightly, dark eyes stormy.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he assures, and, hoping for a moment that maybe drunk-John is just talking about abandoning him on the stairs, points out: “There’s only three more floors to go...”

But John’s shaking his head, leaning in and burying his face against Roger’s throat, his breathing shaky and rough. “I don’t want you to leave. I need you to stay.”

It hurts, like physical thumps to the chest, but Roger just winds both arms around him and holds him close, glancing up and down at the stairs to make sure they’re still alone. John’s body feels so vulnerable against him, so thin, so breakable, like he’s already full of cracks and one more blow might shatter him.

“I’m staying,” Roger tells him softly, tilting his head down so he can murmur it in John’s ear, trying to get the message through. “I’m staying, okay?”

Swallowing audibly, John just keeps breathing hard against Roger’s shoulder, gusts of hot, damp air through the thin cotton of his shirt, until he finally exhales: “Promise me.”

“I promise,” Roger swears earnestly, stroking a soothing hand across the back of John’s neck.

“Okay,” John says, sounding like he’s trying to steel himself. He sniffs and pulls away, wiping a hand across his eyes although none of the tears have actually fallen. “Okay then. Let’s go.”

Roger blinks at the sudden turnaround and echoes uncertainly: “Okay? Are you sure?”

John nods and starts trying to find his feet again, repeating it back with forced determination. “Okay. I’m okay.”

Scrambling up after him, Roger slides an arm back around his waist and shakes his head as they start the long climb again. Just moments later, John’s babbling about how the wallpaper around them - clearly a remnant of the seventies - reminds him of his nan’s old house. Roger just lets him talk, mind working overtime on what had just happened. Not that he’s not glad that John recovered so quickly, but the speed at which he broke down in the first place was terrifying. And okay, he’s drunk, which just expedited matters, but clearly he’s not dealing with the Andy situation at all well.

“I miss my nan,” he sighs finally, his trip down wallpaper memory-lane over.

“I miss your nan too,” Roger commiserates, patting him on the back.

They’re at the fifth floor now, just one more to go, and Roger has a sudden thought which he’s fairly sure he knows the answer to.

“Have you got your keycard?”

John, as predicted, shakes his head, pressing a hand against the wall as they turn the corner for the last gasp. “I gave it to Nick so I wouldn’t lose it.”

Roger smiles at him fondly. “Perfect logic, as ever, John.”

“Where _is_ Nick?” John asks, looking around them in confusion as though he might appear from behind them at any second.

“With Simon.”

“Where’s Simon?”

“I have no idea.”

“Oh. _Ahh_.”

“It’s okay, Johnny, you can sleep with me.”

Too good to pass up, a slow, interested smile crosses John’s face and Roger rolls his eyes, adding: “ _Not_ like that. Besides, you’ll pass out within ten seconds of hitting the mattress, trust me.”

“That’s not true,” John retorts, as Roger props him up against the wall by his door, three down from John’s. He reaches out and traces a finger down Roger’s cheek as he searches his pocket for his key. “You’ve got pretty cheekbones, I ever tell you that?”

“Yeah,” Roger answers with a smile, reaching up to take John’s hand in his own and leading him into the room. “You did. But try not to poke my eye out, okay?”

“Your lack of faith in me is ats...ast...” John tails off as he glances around Roger’s room in interest. “It’s shocking, Rog.”

“I’ve been victim to you, the walking accident-waiting-to-happen before, that’s all.”

John tuts as he sits down on the edge of the double bed and folds himself in half, tugging off his shoes and socks. When he sits back up straight he grabs the sheets and blinks at the wall in front of him, dizzy.

“You’re not going to throw up on my bed, are you?” Roger asks, watching him cautiously as he toes off his own shoes and unbuttons the cuffs of his shirt. “‘Cause if you are, you can go and sleep in the bath instead.”

John shoots him a pitiful look, but shakes his head with a smile. Weighing the situation up against past experience, Roger decides to trust him.

He moves to stand between John’s long, outstretched legs and takes hold of one wrist and then the other, removing his cuff links for him and starting work on the buttons of his shirt. John’s eyes gaze up at him with a thousand-yard stare, latching onto him with the kind of concentration he rarely has when he’s sober.

“You used to do this for me,” he murmurs, “a long time ago.”

Roger smiles faintly. “I’ve done it for you a hundred times.”

“I know,” John says, sounding fragile again. Roger can barely stand to look into his eyes, too much there in the dark depths.

“You’ve never stopped being all skin and bone, haven’t you?” he muses softly, looking at the sharp lines of John’s collar bones as he slips out of the shirt. He picks up the crumpled garment and moves away to hang it up, aware that it’ll be the only thing John’ll have to put on in the morning. When he turns around from the wardrobe, John’s crawled back to recline on the bed, still watching him and leaning back on stretched out arms.

“C’n I kiss you goodnight, Rog?” he asks out of the blue, voice a little raw, as Roger moves to set the alarm clock.

Roger glances down at him warily. “Just a kiss?”

John nods with amusing solemnity. “Just a kiss.”

Putting the clock back down, Roger slips off his shirt and throws it at the nearest chair, then sets one knee down on the bed. John looks up at him, waiting, and he smiles. “When you say ‘can I kiss you?’, you actually mean ‘can you kiss me?’, don’t you? Lazy git.”

John grins faintly at that and tilts his head back, inviting. Shaking his head, Roger moves to lean over him and kisses that smile away, soft and chaste. He slides his hands slowly down John’s forearms to his wrists, tangling their fingers together against the sheets. John makes a quiet sound of relief and kisses him back, slow and needy. Bringing his hands back up, Roger splays one against John’s back and curls the other around one of his elbows, gently upping the pressure until it gives way beneath him, and he eases John slowly down to the mattress, never breaking the kiss.

The strong taste of whiskey is what forces him to pull away, finally, the sensual reminder that John is more than a little drunk and way more than a little emotional on top of that.

John lifts his head up off the pillow to chase the last kiss from him before slumping back down, already looking beyond tired, dark smudges under his eyes.

“You used to do that for me, too,” he echoes quietly, and Roger reaches across to snap off the bedside lamp, plunging them into darkness before John can see the look in his eyes.

“Go to sleep, Johnny,” he orders softly, lying down on the cold sheets.

He’s not surprised to feel one of John’s arms wrap around him, as though to stop him from disappearing in the night.

 

* * * * * * * *

 

Morning brings a sharp slant of low, autumn sun through the blinds and straight into Roger’s eyes, waking him up half an hour before he’s due to get up. Sighing, he reaches across to turn the alarm off in advance and slings his arm across his face. The one around him is still weighing heavily across his hips and it feels like John’s curled up, his warm breaths gusting across the middle of Roger’s back somewhere.

Carefully, gently, he lifts John’s arm and slides out from his grasp, setting his feet on the floor and squinting against the morning light. There’s a mumble and a shift of sheets behind him and he turns his head to see John, rumpled and frowning, the perfect bed-head.

“Morning,” Roger greets him quietly, watching, well aware that his head’s probably thumping and that he’ll most likely be asleep again in seconds.

John rubs a hand across his face and mumbles against the pillow: “Did I say something stupid last night?”

Schooling his expression into something neutral, Roger shakes his head and reaches back to scratch a finger gently under John’s stubbled jaw. “Nothing more stupid than usual, eh? Go back to sleep, it’s early.”

The frown on John’s face eases slightly at the soft touch and he garbles an “okay”, drifting back off.

Roger lets out a low breath of resignation and stands, stretching one shoulder back with a click of bones and making his way to the ensuite.

 

By the time he’s showered and shaved and getting dressed, John’s a little more alive and goes to take a shower of his own, hands grabbing everything along the way to steady himself. Roger passes him his shirt from the cupboard and pats him sympathetically on the shoulder.

He’s sat on the bed and answering a text from Nick (‘Please tell me you’ve got John?’) when the man in question reappears, damp hair slicked back, looking especially tall and lean as he props himself against the bathroom doorway, shirt hanging open, feet still bare.

“I just remembered, in there...” he utters, voice low and hungover and full of gravel. “Fuck, I just remembered.”

Roger glances across at him warily and John shakes his head in disbelief, pushing a hand nervously through his hair.

“Fuck, I’m sorry, Rog, I didn’t mean to...I mean, I’d never try to force you to stay...”

Eyebrows lifting in surprise, Roger shakes his head in return, setting his phone down on the bed. “You didn’t, John, you didn’t say anything like that.”

“I guilt-tripped you,” John says, nothing but disgust at himself in his voice.

“No,” Roger assures him firmly, “that’s not true.”

“But I said...I said...” John tails off, brow creasing as it all floods back. His back slides down the wall and he sits on the floor, pulling one of his knees up, shoulders slumped.

“You said you wanted me to stay,” Roger tells him, getting up and moving across to crouch in front of him. “Which is one of the nicest things you could ever say to me, so _no_ , John, you didn’t say anything stupid last night.”

John lifts his head, looking up at him with worried, guilty eyes. “I made a big scene, didn’t I?”

Smiling slightly, Roger sits down by his side, bumping their shoulders together. “It was pretty small on the scale of John-scenes, actually. No one saw a thing, anyway.”

John sighs and drops his head sideways onto Roger’s shoulder. The lingering scent of whiskey’s gone now, replaced by mint, the evidence of him having pinched some of Roger’s mouthwash.

“I shouldn’t have been drunk last night. What a really stupid fucking thing to do.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself,” Roger admonishes, reaching out to curl a hand around John's kneecap. “You were drunk, and because you were drunk I know that what you said you _meant_ , and...that means a lot to me.”

John lifts his head back up to look at him, confused. “How could you not know that that’s how I feel?”

Roger shrugs, forcing himself to keep eye-contact under John’s intense scrutiny. “I was gone for a really long time, wasn’t I? Sometimes I still expect you and Nick and Simon to turn around and say ‘actually, maybe we were better off without you’, you know? I mean, you could, and I’d understand. You got used to making decisions together; it must be hard having to put up with two...” he pauses, then corrects himself: “With one more voice.”

“I left as well, you know,” John reminds him quietly.

“Not for long,” Roger counters with a shake of his head and a wry smile.

John frowns. “You do know that Nick never meant it when he used to say he was happier with just Simon? He was just angry. At me, mostly.”

“I’m sure there’s an element of truth in there,” Roger says with a shrug.

John stares at him for a long moment before reaching out with his free arm and curling it around his shoulders, pulling him into an awkward sideways hug, pressing their cheeks together, rough on smooth. “We got used to being really awful to each other, that’s what we got used to. See, this is why we all need to get drunk and say every fucking embarrassing thing that we haven’t been saying to each other. We need to have a...a drunken... _emotion-orgy_ or something.”

Roger laughs softly against John’s shoulder. “Don't most people call that a heart-to-heart?"

"This would involve more throwing things and crying on each other's shoulders, probably."

"So you were just paving the way, as usual.”

John squeezes him hard, and they sit that way for long minutes, Roger’s hand stroking up and down John’s back, John just holding onto him tightly. It’s quiet, only the faint sound of traffic outside the window, and a few muffled thumps of people moving around in rooms up above them.

“Nick was worrying about you earlier. He sent me a text,” Roger speaks up eventually, and John laughs, low and amused.

“Are you sure? Worrying whether I’ve taken off or not, more likely.”

Roger smiles and strokes the fingers of one hand back behind John’s ear, smoothing his damp hair. “Or that we’ll lose the deposit on your room.” The laugh he gets for that one is so much more John-like that Roger’s heart gives a little twist of relief, and he adds: “He does worry about you, you know.”

“Yeah,” John says, a smile in his voice as he drops his head down to Roger’s shoulder. “I know. I’ll go and find him in a minute, get my key back, annoy him for a while - you’ve got to go and do some interviews with Charlie, haven’t you?”

“Yeah,” Roger sighs, “although god knows where he is by now.”

“Maybe Nick’s got him. Why don’t you come with me, we’ll track them both down?”

“Does that mean we have to get up off the floor?”

“Sorry, old man,” John consoles, unfolding himself from the hug and getting to his feet in an annoyingly graceful way, considering. He holds out a hand as Roger narrows his eyes at him.

“Two months,” he reminds him, reaching up and curling their fingers together. “Whippersnapper.”

“Two months are two months,” John reasons as he hauls him up, slinging an arm around his shoulders. “Don’t worry, though, Charlie’s got two years on you. There’s always that.”

“There is always that,” Roger agrees, patting down his pockets to make sure he’s got his key and grabbing his phone up off the bed. “And it’s better than being the baby, right?”

There’s a knock on the door suddenly, a smart, sharp rap of knuckles.

John grins. “Speaking of whom.”

As he moves to open the door, Roger turns to walk backwards and asks him with a smirk: “So do you want to mention the ‘emotion-orgy’ we’re all going to have, or shall I?”


End file.
